Echoes
by She's a Star
Summary: This train of thought cannot be pursued. The repercussions are unimaginable. Jack knows this.


**Echoes**

_By She's a Star_

**Disclaimer:** Alias is J.J.'s.

**Author's Note:** Okay, this is mightily bizarre. For one thing, it's Nadia/Jack, which I personally am not all that into, but my dear friend Madi (Sugar Princess on Ff.N) is crazy for it. So . . . I kinda wound up writing one. And it's . . . yeah, mightily bizarre. What fun!

General season four spoilers; there's a reference to an occurrence from A Man of His Word in here, but I think that's it. Set before the arc that started at Nightingale.

* * *

There are a thousand things wrong with this moment, and a person can only break so many times before ceasing to care. 

"You look so much like her," he says, in dimmed tones. Outside the sunlight is stale and white and he prefers the darkness of her eyes.

"I'm sorry." She is; he knows that.

"It doesn't matter."

* * *

He has hated mornings ever since discovering his wife's betrayal. Laura had been very much a morning person, all smiles and cajoling requests for the household to rise and shine. Shining had been a particular specialty of hers. 

At work, everything else seems to fade somewhat. Sydney passes him with conflicted perhaps-smiles; she has not decided whether or not to forgive him yet. This makes two of them. Everything he has done (and this is his justification) has been for her, for his daughter's safety. Until now.

Nadia's laughter spills throughout the building, casting an illusion of omnipresence. Something inescapable. Weiss mutters something to her, clumsy and sheepish and painfully sincere, and she is, miraculously, charmed. Jack will glance at them, for a disinterested moment, and when she smiles there is so much of Laura in her face.

"It's just," he recalls saying once, awkward and more terrified than most of the people who know him now could ever suspect him capable of being, "that I've found . . . I don't like to imagine my life without you in it."

And Laura had smiled like that.

* * *

The first time he touches her, it is an accident. They are all at Sydney's (and Nadia's, though something in him won't let him grow used to this), he and Arvin. It is meant to be, he supposes, a family affair of sorts. Ridiculous, yes, and yet he complies, not wanting to offend either of them. He guesses it was Nadia's idea; Sydney glares daggers at Sloane as they eat and speaks in short, abrupt statements. 

"She truly is her father's daughter, Jack," Arvin comments wryly afterward, as Sydney disappears down the hall and Nadia busies herself with the dishes.

The phrase holds a certain undeterminable sharpness, and his eyes shift, briefly, to Nadia. Back to Arvin. There are some things, he reasons, that he cannot be expected to fully accept.

(Laura had always been friends with Emily, and hadn't shown any particular interest in her husband. She'd been courteous, of course, but he cannot comprehend – Irina, Irina's endgame, that was all anything had ever been. One day, he will come to terms with this.)

"Thank you," he finally returns evenly, the second word partially disrupted by the shattering of glass.

Nadia swears quietly, her voice a murmur, nearly indistinguishable. Arvin begins to stand—

"It's all right," Jack says, not knowing why. "I'll take care of it."

Arvin nods.

Nadia is on her knees, balanced gracefully as she gathers shards of what had seconds ago been a wine glass. She glances up at him and smiles.

"It slipped," she offers, by way of explanation.

"I see," he responds, and the words seem clumsy and strange. He wonders if it is possible to inherit charm. The ability to beguile is not hereditary, of course, but she continues to stare at him innocently and he almost thinks it plausible.

"It's fine," she proceeds. "You don't need to help me." – even though he hasn't actually made a move to do so – "I can take care of it."

"All right." He turns, inexplicably missing Laura, or perhaps Irina, and Arvin is watching them with a mild sort of interest.

This train of thought cannot be pursued. The repercussions are unimaginable. Jack knows this.

"Jack?"

Abruptly, he is facing her again. She's standing now, and closer than she should be; his hand barely brushes her forearm.

"Maybe," she whispers, and leans in slightly, "you should go check on Sydney."

The scent of her perfume is at once heady and too sharp.

"Yes," he agrees.

* * *

"I can't do this anymore," Sydney announces in a hiss on an until-now unremarkable Thursday. "I cannot lie to my sister." 

"Sydney—" he begins, not knowing where it might end.

"She needs to know the truth about Mom," presses Sydney, each word holding some dim promise of disaster. "She needs to know what you did."

And suddenly the ferocity is gone, replaced by something broken. Her eyes grow wide and sad and he chooses not to recognize the way the fluorescent lights catch her tears. He did this to her.

"Sydney," he says again, forcing himself to look at her, "where your mother is concerned, the truth can only result in misery." He pauses, searching for a conviction that he does not feel. "By withholding this knowledge, you are saving her."

Sydney stares up at him, traces of a little girl in her as she silently weighs the worth of what he has said. Part of him almost hopes that she'll uncover some long-absent defiance. Instead she nods, the movement near-imperceptive, and turns away.

Listening to her footsteps, he cannot help but recognize that she has gone unsaved.

* * *

He dreams of Irina. 

"You're slipping," she observes, something almost like amusement illuminating her features. "I've come to expect better."

_Where have you earned the right to expect anything?_ He wants to ask this, but finds that he can't. Instead –

"There are echoes." He will communicate this to her somehow, he thinks. "Surely you of all people can understand that."

"Oh, yes," she answers, aggravatingly agreeable. The corners of her mouth turn gently upward in a smile. A smirk, maybe. Something about her renders him unable to tell. "It's a matter of being haunted, then?"

"I suppose you find the idea flattering."

It is a smile now, he decides. "Maybe."

He takes a moment just to look at her, and though he knows she's not there, part of him is still thoroughly susceptible to the illusion. It has always been this way, with her.

"There is nothing," he tests, careful and precise, "beyond this."

He knows that she will easily find the disguised question within it.

Sure enough—

"This kind of restlessness," she returns, with a tender wisdom, "it's enough to drive any man crazy." There is sadness in her that he has always chosen not to recognize. "Even you."

"What is this?" he inquires wryly. "A diagnosis?"

She smiles and shushes him. Her hands are cold to the touch.

* * *

"Is Sydney here?" he asks, awkward and fully aware that she isn't. The rain pours with reckless abandon; it has been doing so steadily since this morning. Aware, it almost seems, of the need for certain things to be washed away. 

"No, I'm sorry," Nadia responds, leaning against the doorframe. A few strands of black hair are pulled by the wind into her eyes; he looks away briefly and pointedly does not recall brushing her hair back. He understands the importance of erasing these moments of weakness. "She's out with Vaughn."

"Ah." Walking away is, of course, the next step. She expects it. He cannot do anything that might suggest this sickness. It must go unacknowledged; he will find a cure in time.

"She should be back soon, though," Nadia continues, throwing him. "Would you like to come inside and wait for her?"

He is being tested, he thinks dimly. By whom, he isn't sure; some force of irony, perhaps. Or perhaps she holds more of her mother's true disposition than he had originally imagined.

"I just made coffee," she persists, seemingly oblivious.

He is struck by the realization that he wants very badly to believe that she is sweet, and good. The shadow of a woman that had disappeared long before Irina had.

It's foolish.

The rain pounds on, merciless, as though it might never stop.

He finds that he cannot quite bring himself to say anything; instead, he looks down at her as she smiles, and follows her inside.

* * *

A half an hour later, they have somehow abandoned coffee in favour of scotch; the rain has been likewise deserted in favour of a jarring sunlight. 

He wishes she would close the blinds, but does not ask.

"You look so much like her." It is a thoughtless observation, repulsive in the weakness it exposes.

Sometimes, he thinks the things he's done may eat away at him, in the end. Others, he knows that they already have.


End file.
